marlyse.comme, myself and my life
Sunday, April 23, 2006
When was it that you felt the first time that you had to live up to something?
While scrubbing the kitchen today I was musing about the things I still needed to do before 3 March when I’m having the final critique of this semester at my art class - which means all 3 paintings need to be DONE - and then the additional paper I need to write on Odilon Redon - a big symbolism painter. So scrubbing and musing I was.
The first painting is no headache for me, it’s done, it’s hanging, over and closure. The second one I kept long enough in stasis that I’m now ready to continue and am past the weariness of possibly destroying the potential in it, I also know what I want to do. Also with the 3rd one, it’s far advanced but the last steps is what will make or break it. And on this last one is still the final-final touches I’m thinking about to make it fit with the others, I’m still mulling over this one.
So overall I know where I’m going, what I’m aiming at - but I do not know how the echo will be. Furthermore I’m waiting for UPS to deliver the goods to continue and I’m very eager to have at it and can’t wait to unpack the boxes of colors which are coming and have my fingers touch the chalk of the soft pastels and rub it between fingers and watch it crumble and mix with each other and turn to dust and tint the skin.
But mixed in all this excitement is an under-current, which comes and goes like the flows and tides of the sea, a flow of anxiousness not to live up to what I have in my head - what MOSTLY happens, so why feel stressed out about it in the first place? And I have to force myself to keep in mind that this is not a test, I’m not in need of some A’s nor is this a client who could be dissatisfied with the product - this is all just for me, for myself to improve, my skills manicured and pedicured - even if the worst happens, that I “break” one or both of my paintings, it’s no big deal to do it all over again, I can do it, nothing lost but hours of work. So what is the pressure all about?
I WANT my paintings to have impact towards the original intention of mine when creating it. THAT is the test for me. And, as I’m in a class to advance myself, one of the main weights in it all is naturally the reaction of the professor. Even though, in the end, I don’t paint for him nor my mates as such, and in the end I might go a path so different from what schools teach or think acceptable or “good art” that there can only be disagreement - and in the end, I won’t care and I’ll go where my urges to paint take me anyhow. But it would be NICE and it would make things EASIER to have my surrounding agree with me.
So the “stress” is about living up to myself while at the same time live up to others. And while thinking about how stupid it is to feel pressured about the school aspect of it - or call it “testing” or “achieving” or “grades” or whatever - I was glancing back over my life, trying to remember the first time I felt this “stick in my back” to arrive at some place, “or else”. It sometimes creeps up with a big project and a client, can even happen when meeting a client for the first time. Other times not at all and I’m all drive on the winning chariot. But I remember the final tests way back when, this “had to be achieved” to be “accepted as fit for the chosen profession” in society and that had been a biggie, but even that was not like this now. And for many, many years I could not care less, either I did it and made the cut, or I didn’t and I’d try again, so what. This was like that when I lived in Paris and this was later too. It was what I thought was right and proper and that was it and no qualms about it. Also now I’ll do in the end what I think is right, but it takes so much more effort to believe in myself without worries.
Do you remember when you felt this push the first time which was not just fun and competition and challenge, but some sort of dreamt up obligation?
I hope this is not age.
Ugh, I really hope this is just a fluke.
Technorati Tags: thinking, challenge, art, musing, school, grades, goals
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